Loft Bed

My daughter is now two and a half and my wife and I have another on the way so…. time to move the little one out of the crib, the only problem is that she doesn’t like the toddler bed that was passed down to her because she is afraid of falling out of it….so what do I, well I am building her a loft bed that is 4′ off the ground, makes sense right? Yea, I thought so too.

I decided on a loft bed after seeing a few with play areas built under them, and decided that she would like that and may even build a slide later to attach to it. Also, with a railing all the way around I think she will feel more secure than in the toddle bed that the rails are now long gone. Plus, when she gets older we can slide another bed under for bunks.

I wanted to build the bed using 2X material but not have it look like 2X material, so I ripped all of the edges to take off the rounded look and change the dimension slightly. I also wanted 4″ square corner post but could not find any other than in pressure treated at the local hardware store, so I decided to glue up three 2X6′s and rip them down to size. The headboard and footboard are mortised, glued, and lagged using 3/8″ lag bolts.

I have completed the head and footboards and am now cutting the mortises for the sideboards to connect the two ends together, if I would have thought about it I should have left a block out with glueing up the legs to save time on cutting the mortises out. The next step is to finish cutting to mortises and cut the sideboards to size for a test at the fit. Then it is a matter of prepping for finish!